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SmartFlares

At the 2018 American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston, I asked a question to Chad Mirkin after his talk on Spherical Nucleic Acids. This is what I said:

In science, we need to share the bad news as well as the good news. In your introduction you mentioned four clinical trials. One of them has reported. It showed no efficacy and Purdue Pharma which was supposed to develop the drug decided not to pursue further. You also said that 1600 forms of NanoFlares were commercially available. This is not true anymore as the distributor has pulled the product because it does not work. Finally, I have a question: what is the percentage of nanoparticles that escape the endosome.

I had written my question and I asked exactly this although not in one block as he started answering before I had made all my points. He became very angry. The exchange lasted maybe 5 minutes. Towards the end he said that no one is reading my blog (who cares), that no one agrees with me, he called me a “scientific zealot” and a “scientific terrorist”. The packed room was shell shocked. We then moved swiftly to the next talk.

Two group leaders, one from North America and the other one from Europe, came to me afterwards.

Group leader 1:

Science is ever evolving and evidenced based. The evidence is gathered by first starting to ask questions. I witnessed an interaction between two scientists. One asks his questions gracefully and one responding in a manner unbecoming of a Linus Pauling Medalist. It took courage to stand in front of a packed room of scientists and peers to ask those questions that deserved an answer in a non-aggressive manner. It took even more courage to not become reactive when the respondent is aggressive and belittling. I certainly commended Raphael Levy for how he handled the aggressive response from Chad Mirkin. Even in disagreements, you can respond in a more professional manner. Not only is name calling not appropriate, revealing the outcomes of reviewers opinions from a confidential peer-review process is unprofessional and unethical.*

Lesson learned: Hold your self to a high standard and integrity.

Group leader 2:

Many conferences suffer from interesting discussions after a talk in such way that there are questions and there are answers. So far so good. Only in rare cases, a critical mind starts a discussion, or ask questions which imply some disagreement with the presented facts. Here I was surprised how a renowned expert like Chad Mirkin got in rage by such questions of Raphael Levy and how unprofessional his reaction was. It was not science any longer, it was a personal aggression, and this raises the question why Chad Mirkin acted like this? I do not think that this strategy helps to get more acceptance by the audience. I tribute to Raphael Levy afterwards, because I think science needs critical minds, and one should not be calm because of the fear to get attacked by a speaker. Science is full of statements how well everything works, and optimism is the fuel to keep research running. There is nothing wrong with this, but definitely one also need critical questions to make progress, and what we don’t need is unprofessional behavior and discreditation.

* Group leader 1 refers here to the outcome of the reviews of this article which you can read on ChemrXiv and which was (predictably) rejected by Nature Biomedical Engineering. During the incident Chad Mirkin used these reviews to attack me.

“Calling a fellow researcher a “scientific terrorist” for raising concerns and asking a question (even if you disagree with them) is shocking. Sorry to hear that there wasn’t any real discussion instead, would’ve been interesting.” @bearore

“Surprised this isn’t getting more pub. One must wonder at what point does one’s ego/reputation become more important than the science, which ABSOLUTELY must include the bad with the good.” @Ben_Jimi440

“Keep fighting the good fight tenaciously, Raphael. Like the detectives in those old film noir shows… ” @drheaddamage